"I wonder how the high colleges managed to produce so many high asses." Paracelsus
Character matters
As long as people's childhood repression goes unresolved -- they will be shackled into the chains of compulsive repetition -- and it doesn't matter how well anyone articulates very nice ideas... The problem is not a lack of knowledge and educated people, there are plenty of educated people with intellectual knowledge, the problem is an emotional blockage with the so-called “professionals” or “educated people” hiding behind their rationalizations and seductive theories to protect themselves from having to face and feel their own emotional pain. It takes courage to see, face, and feel our painful truths, intelligence alone is not enough --- intelligence alone just helps create seductive rationalizations, theories, illusions, and lies.
Alice Miller explains beautifully in her book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in child-rearing and the Roots of Violence pages 42 and 43:
"Just as in the symbiosis of the "diaper stage," there is no separation here of subject and object. If the child learns to view corporal punishment as "a necessary measure" against "wrongdoers," then as an adult he will attempt to protect himself from punishment by being obedient and will not hesitate to cooperate with the penal system. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His "will" is completely identical with that of the government.
Now that we have seen how easy it is for intellectuals in a dictatorship to be corrupted, it would be a vestige of aristocratic snobbery to think that only "the uneducated masses" are susceptible to propaganda. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals.
Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation.
Educators have always known this and have exploited it for their own purposes, as the following proverb suggests: "The clever person gives in, the stupid one balks." For example, we read in a work on child raising by Grünwald (1899): "I have never yet found willfulness in an intellectually advanced or exceptionally gifted child" (quoted in Rutschky). Such a child can, in later life, exhibit extraordinary acuity in criticizing the ideologies of his opponents--and in puberty even the views by his own parents-- because in these cases his intellectual powers can function without impairment.
Only within a group--such as one consisting of adherents of an ideology or a theoretical school--that represents the early family situation will this person on occasion still display a naïve submissiveness and uncritical attitude that completely believe his brilliance in other situations. Here, tragically, his early dependence upon tyrannical parents is preserved, a dependence that--in keeping with the program of "poisonous pedagogy"--goes undetected.
This explains why Martin Heidegger, for example, who had no trouble in breaking with traditional philosophy and leaving behind the teachers of his adolescence, was not able to see the contradictions in Hitler's ideology that should have been obvious to someone of his intelligence. He responded to this ideology with an infantile fascination and devotion that brooked no criticism.”
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2016/05/education-alone-is-just-another-illusion.html?m=1
Having special talents is wonderful and it’s okay to cash in your talents for a living, but when people hide behind their talents, fame and money to hide their own personal truth and keep themselves and others distracted from the truth and facts then you are misusing your talents and contributing for the lies to spread and silently or covertly you are part of all the violence and atrocities we are witnessing in our world. So if people think they are better than others, because they have special talents, they are being delusional.
Bill Cosby is a great example of that!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/24/as-a-cosby-fixer-comes-out-of-the-shadows-so-does-an-explanation/
These words Alice Miller wrote to one of her readers came to mind: "I was distressed to the core when I read your letter for which I thank you wholeheartedly. At the same time, I felt a sort of gratefulness for the fate that helped the lively, brave and bright little girl not only to survive the terrible jail of her horrific parents but also to remain sound to keep the full clarity and the unusual courage in order TO SEE and TO ACCUSE, without „buts,“ without illusions, without self-betrayal. This stance can only very rarely be encountered, and your letter will certainly help others to recognize their own situation and to forgo the „buts.“ If you have no objections, we can publish your letter also in English and French. I would like to do this because here, the child has the strength to also speak for countless other children who are forced to bear the more or less visible delusions of their parents for years and to experience that as NORMAL. Formed by this ignorance, they often remain blind for the suffering of children during their whole lives and still recommend physical punishment. They work for senseless „research,“ for the pharmaceutical industry, organize wars, produce cruel movies and don’t know at all that they still „live“ in the prison of their sick parents because they never had the courage to see through their parents’ delusions and thus continue to poison the world with the toxin that they had to swallow as children."
Bill Cosby is a great example of that!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/24/as-a-cosby-fixer-comes-out-of-the-shadows-so-does-an-explanation/
These words Alice Miller wrote to one of her readers came to mind: "I was distressed to the core when I read your letter for which I thank you wholeheartedly. At the same time, I felt a sort of gratefulness for the fate that helped the lively, brave and bright little girl not only to survive the terrible jail of her horrific parents but also to remain sound to keep the full clarity and the unusual courage in order TO SEE and TO ACCUSE, without „buts,“ without illusions, without self-betrayal. This stance can only very rarely be encountered, and your letter will certainly help others to recognize their own situation and to forgo the „buts.“ If you have no objections, we can publish your letter also in English and French. I would like to do this because here, the child has the strength to also speak for countless other children who are forced to bear the more or less visible delusions of their parents for years and to experience that as NORMAL. Formed by this ignorance, they often remain blind for the suffering of children during their whole lives and still recommend physical punishment. They work for senseless „research,“ for the pharmaceutical industry, organize wars, produce cruel movies and don’t know at all that they still „live“ in the prison of their sick parents because they never had the courage to see through their parents’ delusions and thus continue to poison the world with the toxin that they had to swallow as children."
https://www.alice-miller.com/en/a-letter-to-my-father/
"It is a great mistake to imagine that one can resolve traumas in a symbolic fashion. If that were possible, poets, painters, and other artists would be able to resolve their pain through creativity. This is not the case, however. Creativity helps us channel the pain of trauma into symbolic acts; it doesn't help us resolve it. If symbolic revenge for maltreatment received in childhood were effective, then dictators would eventually stop humiliating and torturing their fellow human beings. As long as they choose to deceive themselves about who really deserves their hatred, however, and as long as they go on feeding that hatred in symbolic form instead of experiencing and resolving it within the context of their own childhood, their hunger for revenge will remain insatiable (see Miller 1990a).” read more here
"It is a great mistake to imagine that one can resolve traumas in a symbolic fashion. If that were possible, poets, painters, and other artists would be able to resolve their pain through creativity. This is not the case, however. Creativity helps us channel the pain of trauma into symbolic acts; it doesn't help us resolve it. If symbolic revenge for maltreatment received in childhood were effective, then dictators would eventually stop humiliating and torturing their fellow human beings. As long as they choose to deceive themselves about who really deserves their hatred, however, and as long as they go on feeding that hatred in symbolic form instead of experiencing and resolving it within the context of their own childhood, their hunger for revenge will remain insatiable (see Miller 1990a).” read more here
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